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Morigaon (Assam), Jun 14  :   The IT and social media cell convenor of BJP's Morigaon district unit in Assam, Nitu Kumar Bora, was arrested for posting objectionable remarks against Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on social media.

Morigaon Superintendent of Police Swapnanil Deka said Bora posted in his Facebook account that Sonowal and his home department were mute spectator when members of a particular community indulged in activities against hindu women.

The accused allegedly stated that the home department should be handed over to Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

"We arrested him yesterday for his communally provocative and objectionable post against the Chief Minister.

He was later released on bail," Deka said.

Bora's Facebook timeline gives his introduction as "Convenor, Information Technology & Social Media Department, BJP Morigaon District at Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)".

When contacted, BJP Assam unit spokesperson Aparajita Bhuyan informed that party has already initiated steps against Bora.

"A report has been sought from the district committee.

Accordingly, if he is found guilty, we will definitely take action against Bora," she added.                                                                   [Agencies]

Washington, Sep 29: Data of 50 million Facebook users have been exposed following a massive security breach by unknown hackers, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, amid fears that a significant number of the accounts affected could be from India.

The precautionary measure taken by the social media giant has impacted another 40 million users, Zuckerberg said Friday.

In a conference call with reporters, he did not give a country-wise of the user accounts hit by the data breach.

However, a significant number of affected users are expected to be from India, given that the company has the maximum 270 million users in the country. It has 2 billion global users.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a question on the number of accounts affected in India.

"On Tuesday afternoon, our engineering team found an attack affecting up to 50 million accounts on Facebook. The attackers exploited a vulnerability in the code of the View As feature which is a privacy feature that lets people see what their Facebook profile would look like to another person," Zuckerberg said.

"The vulnerability allowed the attackers to steal Facebook access tokens - which are the equivalent of a digital key - which the attackers could have used to take over or access people's accounts," he said.

Stressing that the investigation into the incident was still at a nascent stage, Zuckerberg said the social media giant does not know if any of the accounts were misused or who was behind the cyberattacks.

"So far, our initial investigation has not shown that these tokens were used to access any private messages or posts or to post anything to these accounts."

He said Facebook has taken steps to patch the security flaw to prevent this attacker - or any other attacker - from being able to steal additional access tokens.

Facebook has invalidated access tokens for the accounts, causing those users to be logged out.

"These people will now have to log back in to access their accounts again and we will also notify these people in a message on top of their News Feed about what happened when they log back in," the chief executive officer said.

In addition to getting in touch with law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Zuckerberg said Facebook is logging out all users who used the "View As" feature since the flaw was introduced last year as a precautionary measure.

"This will require another 40 million people - or more - to log back into their accounts," he said.

"This is a really serious security issue. And we're taking it really seriously. We have a major security effort at the company that hardens all of our surfaces, and investigates issues like this," he said in response to a question.

"In this case I'm glad that we found this and that we were able to fix the vulnerability and secure the accounts. But it definitely is an issue that this happened in the first place," he said.

Gary Rosen, vice president pf product management at Facebook, said in all 90 million users would have to log back in. "After they have logged back in, people will get a notification at the top of their News Feed explaining what happened," he said.

Facebook said users don't need to change their passwords.
 (PTI)

Washington, Sep 6: Facebook and Twitter are taking steps to prevent foreign interference in the upcoming crucial elections in the US and around the world, top executives of the two social media giants have assured lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.

US intelligence agencies have in the past claimed that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election won by President Donald Trump. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied the claims during a summit with his American counterpart in Helsinki in July.

Chief Operating Officer of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Executive Officer of Twitter Jack Dorsey on Wednesday testified before the US Congress during the hearing which came just two months before the midterm elections in the US.

Sandberg told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: "We are focused on the upcoming US midterms and on elections around the world. Our efforts in recent elections from Germany to Italy to Mexico to the Alabama special Senate election show us that the investments we are making are yielding results.

"We also know that we cannot stop interference by ourselves. We're working with outside experts, industry, partners and governments, including law enforcement, to share information about threats and prevent abuse".

Facebook is getting better at finding and "stopping our opponents" from financially motivated troll farms to sophisticated military intelligence operations, she said.

"We don't have access to intelligence that the government has, so we don't always know exactly who is behind these attacks or their motives, and that's why we will continue working closely with law enforcement," Sandberg said.

Twitter's Dorsey told lawmakers that his company has made significant progress recently on tactical solutions like identification of many forms of manipulation intending to artificially amplify information, more transparency around who buys ads and how they are targeted, and challenging suspicious logins and account creation.

"We've seen positive results from our work. We're now removing over 200 percent more accounts for violating our policies. We're identifying and challenging 8 to 10 million suspicious accounts every week, and we're thwarting over a half million accounts from logging in to Twitter every single day," Dorsey said.

Twitter has learned from 2016 and more recently from other nations' elections how to protect the integrity of elections; better tools, stronger policy and new partnerships are already in place, he said.

"We intend to understand the efficacy of these measures to continue to get better, but we all have to think a lot bigger than decades past. We must ask the question, what is Twitter incentivising people to do or not do and why? The answers will lead to tectonic shifts in Twitter and our industry operates. Required changes won't be fast or easy," he said.

Responding to a question, Dorsey said Twitter has also learned a lot from elections around the world; most recently, the Mexican election. Twitter opened a new portal to cover that election, that allows any journalist or government law enforcement to actually report any suspicious behaviour very quickly to it, so that they can take more actions.

"Otherwise, we have been investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning models to again recognise the patterns of behaviour because we believe this is where the greatest leverage will come from, recognising how people artificially amplify information and shutting it down before it spreads, into the shared spaces of Twitter and more broadly, into someone's replies to a tweet," Dorsey said.

Sandberg said: "I think we've learned a lot and I think we're going to have to continue to learn because as we learn, our opponents learn and we have to keep up. We're working on technology and investments in people making sure fake news is disseminated less on the platforms, transparency actions and taking down bad actors.

"We have seen everywhere from Mexico to Brazil to other places around the world, these same techniques deploy differently and each time we see it, I think we get smarter, I think we see the new threat and I think we're able to connect the dots and prevent those threats going forward".

Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, expressed concern that social media is vulnerable to corruption and misuse.

The very worst examples of this are absolutely chilling and a threat to democracy, he said.

Ranking Member Senator Mark Warner said that Russians continue to infiltrate and manipulate American social media to hijack national conversation.

"You've gotten better, and I'm pleased to see that you've begun to take action, but also the Russians are getting better as well. They have now become harder to track. Worse, now that the Russian playbook is out there, other adversaries, as we saw recently, like Iran, have joined the fray," he said.

Warner said foreign-based disinformation campaigns represent just a fraction of the challenges.

"Russian disinformation has revealed a dark underbelly of the entire online ecosystem, and this threatens to cheapen American discourse, weaken privacy, erode truth, and undermine our democracy on a previously unimagined scale. Worse, this is only going to get harder as we move into artificial intelligence, use of Deepfake technology," Warner added.
 (PTI)

Washington, Aug 1: Facebook has removed 32 fake accounts and pages that it says were involved in "coordinated inauthentic behaviour" and political influence campaign to manipulate voters ahead of the November mid-term elections in the US.

Though the world's biggest social media network has not yet attributed the accounts to any group, it says the campaign does bear some resemblance to the propaganda campaign allegedly run by Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election.

Facebook has been grappling with continuing public backlash for being slow to recognise Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, along with widespread concerns over its past data-sharing practices. The company's stock has plunged more than 20 per cent since last week, after it reported slower user growth and rising costs for security and safety programs to crack down on abuse of its platform.

"This kind of behaviour is not allowed on Facebook because we don't want people or organisations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they're doing," it said.

Noting that Facebook is still in the very early stages of its investigation and does not have all the facts - including who may be behind this, the company executives warned that they were dealing with increasingly sophisticated political operatives, who are finding new ways to abuse Facebook's platforms.

"We've made it harder for inauthentic actors to operate on Facebook," said Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. "Yet we face determined, well-funded adversaries who won't give up and who are constantly changing tactics."

"At this point in our investigation, we do not have enough technical evidence to state definitively who is behind this," said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy.

However, Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the US Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement tying the latest Facebook activity directly to Russia.

After its latest discovery, Facebook said it had removed 17 profiles and eight pages, along with seven accounts on Instagram, the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app. The earliest was created in March of last year, while the most recent was created this May.

More than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the suspect pages, which had names like Aztlan Warriors, Black Elevation, Mindful Being and Resisters, the company said.

The organisers behind the accounts went to great lengths to conceal their identities including using virtual private networks software that masks the geographic location of computers and Internet-based phone numbers, company officials said.

They also used third parties to publish paid advertisements on Facebook, in violation of the social-media firm's policies banning foreign entities from buying US political ads.

The accounts spent USD 11,000 to run 150 ads on both Facebook and Instagram between April 2017 and June of this year. Facebook previously said roughly 470 fake accounts had spent USD 100,000 on more than 3,500 ads surrounding the 2016 election.

Facebook said it all started two weeks ago when it identified the first of eight pages and 17 profiles.

The pages created about 30 events since May 2017. About half had fewer than 100 accounts interested in attending. The largest had approximately 4,700 accounts interested in attending, and 1,400 users said that they would attend, it said.

One fake page called 'Resisters' was involved in co-ordinating a protest in Washington between August 10-12. The 'No Unite the Right 2 DC' event was meant to be a counter-protest to a rally planned by right-wing groups as a follow-up to last year's deadly 'Unite the Right' protests in Charlottesville.

Fake accounts contacted administrators of five other legitimate Facebook groups to help plan the counterprotest, including offering support for transportation and logistics, and posting ads to hire an event co-ordinator. Facebook said it had disabled the event and was in the process of contacting nearly 2,600 people who had said they were interested in attending.

"These bad actors have been more careful to cover their tracks, in part due to the actions we've taken to prevent abuse over the past year," Facebook said.

For example, they used virtual private networks (VPNs) and internet phone services, and paid third parties to run ads on their behalf.

"We have found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year, which is covered below. But there are differences, too. For example, while IP addresses are easy to spoof, the IRA accounts we disabled last year sometimes used Russian IP addresses. We haven't seen those here," it said.

After being caught flat-footed by the IRA's efforts ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Facebook has expanded its security team, hired counterterrorism experts and recruited workers with government security clearances.

Facebook has deployed technology tools like artificial intelligence and thousands of people to work on security as the company's "major focus" this year is to protect the integrity of upcoming elections in several countries, including India, on its platform, its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said earlier.
 (PTI)

Guwahati, Jul 25: A girl who had posted on Facebook that she was going to commit suicide was saved by the police in the nick of time after the social media giant's US-based headquarters alerted them.

"Info was received from Facebook last night that a minor girl had updated her status as- 'I am gonna to commit suicide today'. The child was located in 30 mins & her safety ensured. She & her family were counselled. She is safe and in their care," the Assam Police said in a tweet.

"The information was received from Facebook headquarters. A life was saved," police officials said.

The post was later deleted on police advice.
 (PTI)


Sambalpur (Odisha), Jul 18: Four persons were arrested for allegedly looting Rs six lakh from a businessman after luring him to meet a girl in whose name a fake Facebook account was created in Bargarh district, the police said.

Bikash Agrawal (32), who is a wholesaler trader and a resident of Nuapada district, visited Paikamal in Bargarh district and collected Rs six lakh from his customers on June 18.

Agarwal was asked to come to Manbhang dam through a Facebook messenger by one Pankaj Majhi who had opened a fake account in the name of the girl with whom Agarwal had developed friendship on the social network, the police said.

As Agarwal reached the place, four persons appeared on two motorbikes, fired in the air to intimidate him and snatched his bag containing Rs six lakh.

Agarwal lodged a complaint with the police the following day and four persons including Pankaj Majhi were arrested from Padampur in Bargarh district yesterday.

"Police have seized Rs 1.52 lakh, two bikes, three mobile phones and a sharp weapon from the possession of the accused persons," said Sub-Divisional Police Officer, Padampur, Laxminarayan Panda.
 (PTI)
Patna, Jul 3: RJD leader Tej Pratap Yadav has alleged that his Facebook account was "hacked" by the BJP-RSS to create a rift in his family and weaken his party.

"My Facebook account was hacked and recovered with the help of Facebook. BJP supporters have always tried to hack my social media accounts and today they succeeded," he said last night in a post on the social media site.

The former state minister's remarks came almost an hour after a post had appeared on his page suggesting that he was upset with some leaders of his party, including an MLC, and that his parents -- RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and national vice-president Rabri Devi -- were turning a deaf ear to his complaints. The post was deleted by Yadav.

"Upon hacking of my Facebook account they came up with a post aimed at creating a rift within my family and weakening our party Some time ago, an RSS supporter had also hacked the Facebook page of my father," he said in his post.

The post had also claimed that the RJD leader had decided not to contest elections from his assembly constituency and was contemplating retirement from politics.

In an apparent reference to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Yadav, the elder son of Prasad, alleged that the hacking of his Facebook account had the approval of "uncle".

Kumar had walked out of the Grand Alliance comprising the RJD, the JD(U) and the Congress last year and formed a new government with the BJP.

No leader from the ruling JD(U)-BJP combine in the state was available for comments.
 (PTI)

Jammu, June 30: Josh Talks in partnership with Facebook hosted #Boost Your Business, an event that brings together business pioneers and upcoming professionals, on the 30th of June in Jammu.
 It was groundbreaking in every sense of the word. The day-long programme cut across genres and brought forth inspiring narratives by entrepreneurs and change makers.

Yakjah, a Kashmiri word meaning 'being together,' is an initiative being run by Ashima Kaul in Jammu & Kashmir for transforming human relationships and building peace. Ashima’s vision for the youth of Kashmir was lauded by the audience.

Mohammad Muneem, the leading voice behind the Urdu band Alif, is inspiring a shift towards compassion and oneness through colloquial references in his poetry and music. He inspired everybody in the audience to let go of stereotypes, assumptions and fears.

Sandeep Chaudhary dropped out of journalism only to clear the UPSC exam in the first attempt while he was working at NABARD. His talk was a major source of inspiration for the crowd.

Monika Manohar, the only Bokwa instructor in Jammu, strongly believes in encouraging women between the age of 15 and 55 to work on their fitness. For this purpose she started Women Alive, an aerobics and kathak centre that has has been successfully running in the Jammu region for over five years.

Ankush Gupta, founder of Servicesmojo and Jammu Startup Community, inspired young innovators to expand their ideas into startups. His talk closed the event on a high note.

Josh Talks Jammu was a spectacular event with several intriguing stories that were of major relevance to the young audience. We look forward to having them back next year.


Guwahati, Jun 29: A fake Facebook account of Assam Director General of Police Kuladhar Saikia has been detected, a senior police officer said.

A fake Facebook account in the name of 'Kuladhar Saikia' was opened on June 11, but the DGP's original account is in the name of Kula Saikia, Guwahati Commissioner of Police Hiren Nath told reporters yesterday.

A case has been registered with the Panbazar police station and investigations are on, he said.

"We have taken the matter very seriously and expect to arrest the culprit soon," he said.

Earlier this month, a fake Facebook account was opened in the name of Nath. A man was arrested in this connection.

Nath has no Facebook account.

Both the fake Facebook accounts of the DGP and the Commissioner of Police had photographs of the police officials in their uniform.

Assam police has launched a campaign against the misuse of social media in the aftermath of the lynching of two men in Karbi Anglong district on June 8 and arrested 35 persons for spreading rumours and hate messages on social networking sites.

Assam Police has upgraded and strengthened its social media presence by recently launching its SMART Social Media Centre as a platform for engaging and providing information to the citizens.
 (PTI)

New Delhi, Jun 28: Election Commission has asked Facebook to examine blocking of political advertisement during last 48-hours before elections in the country, a request the social media giant hasn't responded to as yet, but is examining.

At a June 4 meeting of the Committee constituted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to study provisions of Section 126 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, a Facebook representative agreed to examine providing a window or button on the Facebook page for flagging complaints about violation of election laws, according to minutes of the meeting reviewed by.

The representative also agreed to examine if the number of Facebook reviewers attending to complaints against contents posted by users can be increased from current 7,500 persons. The number, he said, could be augmented during election period if the need arises.

Section 126 of the Representation of the People prohibits displaying any election matter by means, inter alia, of television or similar apparatus, during the period of 48 hours before the hour fixed for conclusion of poll in a constituency.

The official of social media giant at the meeting stated that complaints can be lodged against the 'contents' on the Facebook and these are reviewed as per the global community standards. "If contents are found to be violating the community standards, they will be taken off," he stated, according to the minutes of the meeting.

Action would be promptly taken if a complaint was made by the Commission or its machinery about violation of any provision of the law in regard to "contents on Facebook".

"In such cases, action will be with regard to violation of the law and not merely based on the global community standards. There is a policy of taking special care during elections," he told the meeting.

In the case of proved violations, the Facebook informs the users concerned and contents are removed. The cases of removal of contents are also posted on the transparency page of Facebook.

"Maintaining a safe community for people to connect and share on Facebook is absolutely critical to us. In our recent meeting with the Election Commission of India, we explained that we review content flagged to us on basis of our global 'Community Standards' and remove it from our platform if found in violation of our policies.

"Additionally, we also reiterated that we remove content which is in violation of any provision of the law in the country," a Facebook India spokesperson said.

At the meeting, the official was "requested to consider the possibility of blocking posting of election advertisements during the period of last 48 hours and to collect details about the expenditure part of the advertisements for elections," according to the minutes.

A source aware of the company's stance on the matter said that Facebook has not made any specific commitment on this as yet, but is examining the request.

It was also suggested to him that there should be some mechanism to deal with cases of repeated violation by the same user, he said.

Committee Chairman and Sr Deputy Election Commissioner Umesh Sinha said the aim was to prevent violations so as to ensure free and fair elections and asked Facebook to share the code of ethics/guidelines for contents and consider some mechanism to forewarn the users against violation of election laws during elections.

Besides ECI officials, the panel includes representatives of News Broadcasters Association (NBA), Press Council of India, and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
 (PTI)


Hyderabad, Apr 11: T-Hub and Facebook on Wednesday announced the first batch of winning start-ups, selected for their joint program “India Innovation Hub.” 
The program which was launched in November last year, aims to help start-ups focused on using emerging technologies by providing support and mentorship to accelerate their businesses in new and innovative ways. 
A cohort of nine start-ups focused on VR have been selected and each startup will get access to training, mentors, workshops, research, and Facebook’s VR Innovation lab located at T-Hub as a part of the three-month accelerator program, a statement here said.
Nine startups -- Dimension NXG, GMETRI Studios, Highir Technologies, Innov4Sight Health and Biomedical Systems, Loop Reality, Merxius Software, Parallel XR, Scapic Innovations and VadR Selected from 20 shortlisted applications that presented to a jury comprised of subject matter experts from Facebook, T-Hub, and external industry members. The participants were reviewed based on quality of technology solution, product/solution readiness, possible impact in the vertical. 
The selected startups have the potential to boost innovation ecosystem and are working on projects in the domains varying from Healthtech to Industrial Manufacturing, Education to Corporate Learning & Development among many others. With an intent to support a new generation of Indian startups, this cohort of startups as part of India Innovation Hub program will get an opportunity to work and scale up under the aegis of Facebook. The startups selected through this program will work with subject matter experts, mentors, and coaches from both Facebook and T-Hub, to collaborate and prioritize the solution. 
All interventions will happen at T-Hub, the statement added. UNI


London, Apr 7: The Cambridge Analytica scandal that has plagued Facebook for weeks has pushed a number of platform users to consider closing down their accounts, however, even if people choose to delete their Facebook profiles, it is almost impossible to do so without leaving a digital footprint, said an Euronews report.
Juan Carlos Lara, a lawyer specialised in new technologies, explained to Euronews to what extent a Facebook account can be deleted.
“Facebook is obliged to delete personal data for those who wish to terminate their accounts in most countries. However, there are two things to consider,” said Lara.
“The first thing is that the platform offers the option to 'deactivate' the account, which suspends it but does not erase all the personal data. This option is very easy — all you need to do is go to the general settings tab and click on ‘Manage account,’ which will give you the deactivate option."
“But this does not mean that your account has been erased. To do this, the process is quite easy but hard to find,” said Lara.
“In the same ‘Manage account’ option, you can click on a ‘More information’ link, which sends you to a graphic explanation of the deactivate option.
"In the ninth page of the document appears a new link with more detailed information on what erasing your account means (this option is also accessible through the frequently asked questions page). This link gives you the option to permanently delete the account."
“Yes and no,” said Lara.
“The information stays inside Facebook’s servers even if it disappears from the public user interface. Additionally, everything that was published on somebody’s wall or sent over private message will remain there, it’ll just show a deleted user image.”
“The Cambridge Analytica scandal demonstrated that once information is out of Facebook’s control (or in general once it’s on the Internet) it is very difficult to follow its trace or know how many times it was duplicated,” added the lawyer.
According to data released by Facebook, more than a million users in the UK had their data shared with Cambridge Analytica.
The company believes that the information of up to 87 million people — mostly in the US — was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, said Facebook chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer in a statement on the implementation of privacy tools.
“In theory, everything inside a computer can be erased but Facebook has computers all over the world, which makes it hard to trace whether information has been deleted completely,” said Lara, adding that third parties may have been duplicating data without consent.
In Europe, because of the digital data protection directive, there are courts where people can demand the deletion of personal data if “it’s proven that the information wasn’t fully deleted and third parties can still access it.”
In order to take legal action, a formal request asking the company to take the information down must already exist.
Lara concluded that it’s not only a legal question but it’s also about having access to the tools that can trace personal data on the world wide web, which is “extremely complicated”.
However, Lara points out that this issue has historical roots — before Facebook and the Internet, personal data was already being recorded without consent. UNI


London, Mar 22: Should you delete Facebook account or is there a way to use the "free" social media platform without allowing it to make money off your personal data?
An Euronews report has said the revelations that the Trump-linked political data firm Cambridge Analytica skirted Facebook's privacy policies to suck up data on over 50 million Americans, and undercover videos showing the company executives boasting about their deceptive campaign tactics are just the nudge some users need to quit the platform entirely, judging by the social media outcry that sent the hashtag #deletefacebook trending Tuesday.
As the saying goes, when the service is free, you are the product.
"All data-based companies use collected data to make money. Where we draw the line on what they can and can't do is the $64,000 question right now," said Raj Goyle, former deputy legal director of the ACLU and co-CEO and co-founder of legal tech site Bodhala. "It's extremely hard for people to safely use a platform when they are not completely sure what they should be protecting themselves against, and what warning signs they should be looking for."
But for those who can't quite quit Facebook, there are ways to at least minimise the site's ability to monetize your personal information without entirely losing the ability to see what cute thing your cousin's baby gurgled this hour or what your co-worker thinks of his sandwich.
For starters, you can go into your applications tab. Under "Apps, Websites, and Plugins" hit the edit tab and "Disable Platform." This will stop your data from streaming through Facebook's API, which is how third parties see all your activity. It will also prevent you from logging in to other sites with Facebook, shut down your Instagram access, and you won't be able to play platform-based apps like "Farmville" anymore.
If that's too much and you're mainly just bothered about the news that your friends who use an app could end up sharing your data even if you never used the app or got any notification, then uncheck all the radio buttons under the "Apps others use" heading for the pieces of data you don't want your friends to share.
Each button warns you that might not be able to use certain apps on Facebook and other sites, but if you just bookmark the address above then you can go always go back and re-enable something if you later find a web service isn't working the way you want it to.
The sharing doesn't stop there. "Even if your profile is set to private," said Ron Schlecht, managing founder of cybersecurity firm BTB Security, your likes, tagged photos, and other details, "can be made available to people who are not your friends or outside your social network."
Some people try to hide by using a fake name or persona on Facebook. But the cellphone number or email address they used to authenticate themselves is connected to all that data, said Schlecht.
That personal identifier can then be connected by data brokers to other sources of your data and reconnect your profile. So while you might be hidden from your old high-school boyfriend or boss, the data miners can still find you.
This is why it can be good to download a copy of all your Facebook data. It can be a memento of all your Facebook activity, but it can also be a learning experience to see just how much information you're sharing. Go under "Settings" and select the option to download your data. It will take a few minutes and the information will come in a few folders, including one that divides up your friends based on whether they're part of your "starting adult life" or "established adult life," along with a file of your facial recognition information called facedata.htm.
"In addition to raising questions about Facebook's role in the 2016 presidential election, this news is a reminder of the inevitable privacy risks that users face when their personal information is captured, analyzed, indefinitely stored, and shared by a constellation of data brokers, marketers, and social media companies," wrote EFF, a non-profit digital privacy and rights advocacy group.
Ultimately, it may be a contradiction to think that anyone can use a website designed to connect people and their data together and not have their information exploited.
"It's not possible to use Facebook safely because the platform is about putting vast amounts of personal information in one place," said Goyle. "Technology is so well developed that it can accurately analyze scraps of information to reconstruct whole profiles of valuable user data. Facebook itself cannot fully protect users from companies and people who want to make use of that information - nor does it seem to want to." UNI


London, Mar 21: An academic who created an app which harvested data from 50 million users says he has been made "a scapegoat" for Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, according to a BBC News report on Wednesday.
Dr Aleksandr Kogan completed work for Cambridge Analytica in 2014, but said he had no idea the data would be used to benefit Donald Trump's campaign.
The psychology academic said he wanted the data so he could model human behaviour through social media.
Facebook says Dr Kogan violated the site's policies.
The Cambridge University researcher developed a personality survey called This is Your Digital Life.
About 270,000 users' data was collected, but the app also collected some public data from users' friends.
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie said as a result the data of about 50 million users was harvested for the analysis firm.
The firm's chief executive Alexander Nix - who has since been suspended - was secretly recorded in a Channel 4 investigation saying the London-based company ran Donald Trump's digital campaign during the 2016 US election.
He said that the work the company did, including research, analytics and targeted campaigning, allowed the Republican candidate to win with a narrow margin of "40,000 votes" in three states.
"We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy," he added.
Cambridge Analytica denies any wrong doing and on Monday said the executives had "entertained a series of ludicrous hypothetical scenarios" in order to "play along with this line of conversation, and partly to spare our 'client' from embarrassment".
But Dr Kogan said the accuracy of the dataset had been "exaggerated" by Cambridge Analytica, and said the dataset was more likely to hurt Mr Trump's campaign.
A spokesperson for Facebook said the academic was not allowed to transfer data to Cambridge Analytica, a third-party who would use the set for commercial purposes.
They added that sharing users' friends data outside the app was also against Facebook's fundamental principles.
But Dr Kogan said he was following advice given to him by Cambridge Analytica, and added he had "no reason to doubt" that was breaking any policy with Facebook.
He said: "I'm honestly stunned by most of this, this has never been my understanding.
"The events of the past week have been a total shell shock, and my view is that I'm being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica when... we thought we were doing something that was really normal.
"We were assured by Cambridge Analytica that everything was perfectly legal and within the terms of service."
On Tuesday a Cambridge University spokesperson said they had "sought and received assurances" from Dr Kogan that no University data, resources or facilities were used for his work and they had found no evidence to contradict that, but were writing to Facebook to "request all relevant evidence in their possession".
Before Channel 4 News had broadcast any of the secret filming, Mr Nix told the BBC's Newsnight programme he felt the firm had been "deliberately entrapped".
There have now been calls for an investigation into the work Cambridge Analytica carried out during the 2013 election in Kenya.
On Tuesday a parliamentary committee called for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to give evidence about the use of personal data by Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has also denied any wrongdoing.
Damian Collins, the chairman of the Commons inquiry into fake news, accused Facebook of "misleading" the committee previously, and said it was "now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process".
Facebook shares fell by a further 5% on Tuesday, following a 6.7 per cent drop on Monday, meaning that in total, about $50bn has been wiped from its market value.
The UK's Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said she would be applying to court for a warrant to search the offices of Cambridge Analytica.
The consumer watchdog the US Federal Trade Commission -- which has the power to levy large fines -- has also reportedly opened an investigation into Facebook. UNI


Chennai, Aug 4 :  Popular film comedian S Ve Shekher has lodged a complaint with the Cyber Crime cell of the Chennai City Police in connection with a fake Facebook account. In the complaint, the film-actor-cum dramatist said miscreants have downloaded his pictures from his official account named 'SVE Shekher Venkatraman' and used it to create a fake account under the name 'SV Sekar'. Pictures taken from his official website were also posted on the account. The actor said the duplicate account affects his personal and political life and sought action against the culprits. A case was registered and further investigation was on. UNI